Historia de un gran amor

Pedro lives with his daughters Rita and Marta in a fishing village in the Papaloapan basin. Rita loves José, a young man who has been fired for organizing a strike to demand workers’ rights. To settle her father’s debt to Don Antonio, the mill owner, Rita offers herself as a pledge. She leaves her humble town and is exploited by several men, including a married politician who turns her into a dancing star.

During the regime of Porfirio Díaz, in the early 20th century, a young widow attends a show for men and discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her with one of the dancers. There she meets Don Simón, president of the League of Good Manners, and starts flirting with him to make her boyfriend jealous.

Michoacán, 1938. Ponciano Robles, an old bachelor, is accustomed to helping poor people in his town. A mule driver begs Ponciano to ask for the hand of a beautiful peasant woman named Rosenda on his behalf. The young woman’s father accepts, but the mule driver repents and leaves the town to avoid the commitment. The kind-hearted Ponciano agrees to take care of the abandoned woman after her parents throw her out of the house.